May 2, 2000
Dispatches from South Carolina
Same As It Ever Was
By Kevin Alexander Gray
On July 2, 1776,
the "anti-slavery clause" was removed from the Declaration
of Independence at the insistence of Edward Rutledge, delegate
from South Carolina. Rutledge threatened that South Carolina
would fight for King George against her sister colonies. He asserted
that he had "the ardent support of proslavery elements in
North Carolina and Georgia as well as of certain northern merchants
reluctant to condemn a shipping trade largely in their own bloodstained
hands." Fearful of postponing the American Revolution, opponents
of slavery, who were in the clear majority, made a "compromise."
Thus, July 4, 1776, marks for African Americans not Independence
Day but the moment when their ancestors' enslavement became fixed
by law as well as custom in the new nation.
If only anti-slavery foes had said "no
compromise!" to South Carolina and rejected slavery and
white privilege, the United States would have begun as a principled
nation instead of a hypocritical one. Maybe then, today's South
Carolinians would not be at the point of violence about a flag
and what to do with it.
Throughout American history, South Carolinians
have led the fight to preserve and defend slavery, white supremacy,
racial segregation, and race fear. South Carolina is the soul
of the Confederacy. It is safe to say that South Carolina gave
birth to Dixie, so much so that it is a matter of pride to many
South Carolinians that their state was the first to secede from
the Union and that Citadel cadets fired the first shot of the
Civil War.
South Carolina's
singular role in United States history is as a conduit for the
growth of slavery. Between 1700 and 1775, forty percent of all
enslaved blacks came to America through the state. As Ellis Island
in New York was the first stop for many Europeans willingly entering
the New World, Sullivan's Island near Charleston, was the first
stop for many Africans who were brought here against their will.
South Carolina had the highest percentage of slaveholders in
the nation. In 1860 almost half (45.8 percent) of all white families
in South Carolina held enslaved Africans.
The Confederate flag represents the glorification
of that history. The flag represents slavery, racial oppression
and a deep-seated belief in the very existence and rightness
of the Confederacy. The flag symbolizes a privileged, landed
class, white supremacy and patriarchy. Those who fought and died
under the Confederate flag were willing to die for the expansion
of slavery. This, not some vision of mint juleps and ladies in
ringlets and lace, is the "heritage" that modern Confederates
defend when they champion this flag. For most Americans, let
alone most African Americans, the men who died under the Confederate
battle flag were not heroes; they were traitors to the fundamental
notion of human freedom.
For the past 32 years, the Confederate flag
has flown atop South Carolina's Statehouse dome. Now there is
finally a movement to move the flag to the grounds around the
Statehouse. Many in the white community believe this is a compromise
blacks ought to jump on. Some have even offered that the flag
be cast in bronze as possible compromise. A few white state legislators
promise violence if the flag is not honored "appropriately"
and as part of the "compromise," black legislators
must agree to leave all Confederate monuments, building, school,
street names and the like in place.
In spite of such threats, the local, national
and international community must repudiate this compromise. It
is unacceptable to have the Confederate flag flying on public
property. The flag is a racist, ignoble symbol and location does
not change its meaning. The flag as government-imposed speech
or symbolism is a slap in the face to all Americans who believe
in equality. The NAACP's demand is that the flag be removed from
the dome and relegated to a museum. So, if the South Carolina
legislature decides to cast the flag in bronze, the group will
have accomplished its mission. That does not mean that the remaining
monuments to racism ought to be left alone. All monuments that
glorify slavery ought to crumble, and it is outrageous and not
just symbolic that the most reactionary legislators are insisting
that all other symbols of white supremacy and enslavement must
stand if they give up this one.
The National
Association for the Advancement for Colored People remains the
spearhead of the economic boycott against South Carolina. Although
the boycott sometimes lacks coherence, the group loses credibility
amongst its core supporters by accepting any deal that leaves
the flag flying. The boycott generally centers on tourism but,
at present, it is difficult to measure the effect on white-owned
businesses or activities such as concerts or sports events. Some
in the movie industry such as Will Smith and Mel Gibson ignored
the call to avoid the state while tennis pros Serena and Venus
Williams refused to play at the all-but-segregated Hilton Head.
The Neville Brothers appeared in the state while singer Gerald
Levert says he won't perform until the flag comes down.
A few months ago, the New York Knicks moved
their training camp from Charleston. Players said they "didn't
feel welcome" with the flag flying. If the NAACP expands
the boycott, it should include discouraging athletes, black and
white, from playing major college sports in the state. The NCAA
has indicated that it is willing to go along.
The boycott has had an immediately adverse
affect on blacks. Many black families come into the state for
reunions. Hotel owners whose client base is predominately black
feel the immediate pain of the tourist boycott. If the boycott
dramatically affects convention business, that hurts black workers
disproportionately. In spite of this economic reality, moving
the flag to the front door of the Statehouse ends nothing--would
the civil war have ended if slavery had been moved to some more
obscure corner of the nation?--and most black people in South
Carolina are willing to sacrifice a bit longer. They see the
flag as symbolic of the economic disparities and regressive racial
attitudes that have persist in the state to this day.
The South Carolina business community, black
and white, wants the flag down because the boycott and accompanying
negative publicity is costing them money. Yet, many white businessmen
express an inbred sympathy for flag supporters. Many in the chamber
of commerce crowd think that moving the flag to the state's Main
Street will change the image of the state. They are counting
on the rest of the world seeing it their way. They are just as
out of touch with how South Carolina appears to the rest of the
world as their predecessors who put the flag up as a symbol of
resistance to civil rights for African Americans in 1968.
Many white legislators
have openly expressed their longing for, denial of or amnesia
about South Carolina's racist history. Some have mused out loud
about how good it was when all black football teams played the
all-white teams. Almost all ignore past and present Ku Klux Klan
activism and violence in the state. One calls the NAACP, the
'national association of retarded people.'' Others unashamedly
proclaim that black slavery "is good." Confederacy
defenders and those nostalgic for state-sponsored segregation,
present to the world the same troubling mindset as Austria's
Nazi SS defenders. The international community should respond
to South Carolina as it did to Joerg Haider's Freedom Movement
and his Freedom Party-led government.
The South Carolina statehouse is surrounded
by Confederate monuments. Not only that. There are Confederate
monuments at every county courthouse and town square in the state.
The names of white, male southern patriarchs are everywhere.
Towering high in Charleston is a statute of John Caldwell Calhoun
who promoted the ideology of white supremacy and states' rights.
General Wade Hampton who promoted and defended secession and
the Confederacy sits on a horse on the capital grounds. Benjamin
Ryan Tillman, a virulent white supremacist, constitutionally
(and otherwise) who reinstituted white rule after Reconstruction,
faces the Confederate soldier statue that guards the statehouse.
"Pitchfork" Ben drove blacks out
of the state at gunpoint. He and his Sweetwater Sabre Club members
wore white shirts stained in red to represent the blood of black
men. Tillman's heir, Senator James Strom Thurmond, rose to prominence
in 1948 with the States Rights Democratic Party, better known
as the Dixiecrats. Thurmond ran as that party's presidential
candidate; his party stood for segregation and against race mixing.
Throughout his congressional, career Thurmond has opposed every
major civil rights initiative. On the statehouse grounds, Thurmond's
statute faces the Confederate Women's monument.
And long before
Nazi Germany's Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death,"
conducted human experiments on Jews at Birkenau and Auschwitz;
long before the Tuskeegee experiment that left 399 black men
untreated for syphilis from 1932 to 1972, South Carolina had
James Marion Sims. Sims, the "father of gynecology,"
established America's first women's hospital -- the Women's Hospital
of the State of New York. He is also credited with founding the
Cancer Hospital now known as the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Yet before Sims treated the white and wealthy, he experimented
on enslaved black women. Sims performed more than forty experimental
operations on an enslaved woman named Anarcha for a prolapsed
uterus without anesthesia or antiseptic. Sims' memorial is tucked
in a corner of the statehouse grounds next to the Robert E. Lee
Memorial Highway plaque.
All these men hold a place of honor in the
hearts and minds of many white South Carolinians. If they need
to prove that they have not abandoned their racist heritage,
there will remain plenty of evidence after the Confederate flag
comes down. And ensuring that those relics of racism and white
supremacy will remain in place for another generation is far
too high a price to pay in order to achieve the minor feat of
allowing the flag to further defile the statehouse grounds.
While the Statehouse lawn is crowded with
statutes of white men the memory of the rebellious black haunts
modern Confederates. The Citadel, the state-run military academy
in Charleston that was recently forced to accept women, was built
in 1825 after the Denmark Vesey insurrection of 1822. Construction
of the Citadel arsenal was begun in order to protect whites from
"an enemy in the bosom of the state."
In 1999, a majority-white committee was given
the task of coming up with a memorial for the Statehouse grounds
that would recognize the legacy of slavery. Vesey's name was
suggested to the committee. The Vesey conspiracy was one of the
most elaborate black uprisings on record. It involved thousands
of blacks in and around Charleston. In the end Vesey, his five
aides and thirty-seven blacks were hanged for trying to set themselves
and their brethren free. Vesey didn't just shout "give me
liberty or give me death," he acted on that idea, so fundamental
to American concepts of liberty and values. Nevertheless, the
committee refused to recommend a statute of Vesey because "he
advocated killing whites." But the committee did not suggest
taking down the statues of Tillman and Hampton, who advocated
killing blacks.
Many white southerners refuse to believe or
accept the fact that his or her ancestors fought the wrong fight.
You hear the same nonsense over and over: They "fought bravely,"
"defended the land," their cause was "noble"-even
that they fought because they were called and "it was their
duty to fight" Illusions aside, the war was about "keeping
the niggers in place!" Poor whites fought and died in a
"rich man's war" because they wanted to remain "better
than the niggers." And today, if the flag remains on the
dome or even if it is placed on the grounds, the underlying sentiment
that welcomes its continued presence will be "keeping the
niggers from getting what they want!"
For those with an unbiased and honest view
of history, that flag will always represent racial oppression,
first and foremost. Flag opponents are not asking anyone to forget
history or to give up their flag. Just the opposite: We must
never forget! Those who put one of the many Confederate flags
on their cars or fly them in their yards at least do us the favor
of letting us know what they stand for. Still, at some point,
there must be a repudiation of the symbols and icons that glorify
the immorality of the past.
People have
to get beyond that point if we expect them to recognize the debt
owed African Americans for the stolen lives and labor of their
ancestors. And that is the least we ought to expect.
Gray is a writer and activist who resides
in Columbia, South Carolina.
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